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AMBER
“You have got to stop hyperventilating, Amber. You are going to hurt the baby.”
“Hurt the baby? This baby?” I jab a finger into my protruding stomach. “This is the baby of a fucking serial killer, Emma!”
Emma shakes her head and sits on the couch, no longer affected by my emotional outbursts. I, on the other hand, continue to pace the living room like a rabid, caged animal—the living room of the home that Shepherd and I moved into just four days ago. The mortgage I now share with a serial killer.
The second after the FBI showed up at our door and took Shepherd away in handcuffs, I called Emma, absolutely hysterical. She pulled into the driveway four hours later.
“Amber, you need someone here after I leave, to take care of you and Connor.”
Connor is sitting at the kitchen table, playing on his stupid device. My eyes fill with tears.
“Please call someone,” she urges. “Call Mark.”
I snort. “Mark has already submitted an emergency request for full custody of Connor. He can fuck himself. I’m not calling him and I don’t want anyone else here.” I look at the clock. “What time are you leaving?”
“At six-thirty, so, forty-five minutes from now.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I really think?—”
“Shh,” I hiss. “Turn it up—the television!” I point to Shepherd’s face on the screen.
Emma grabs the remote and turns up the evening news show currently airing.
“In a plot twist usually reserved for Hollywood movies, Shepherd Velky, the husband of infamous Detective Rowan Velky, who was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder, has been arrested in connection to those same murders.
Rowan Velky has served months in prison for the murders of Alyssa Kaing, Macy Swift, and Cora Granger. However, the recent discovery of new evidence has revealed that her husband, Shepherd, was the real killer. Our sources tell us that in an effort to protect her mentally ill husband, Ms. Velky concealed evidence that would implicate her husband, and then sacrificed herself in his place. As if that’s not enough, rumors are, Shepherd was secretly having an affair with Ms. Velky’s therapist while all of this was going on. Rowan Velky was quietly released from prison four days before her husband was arrested. Though Ms. Velky was charged with several crimes including tampering with evidence and falsifying reports, she was able to strike a deal with the judge and count her time already served as payment for the charges. Velky’s whereabouts are unknown at this time, but here’s to hoping she’s drinking a margarita on a beach somewhere far, far away…”
I spin around, my heart feeling like it is about to burst out of my chest. “They’re going to arrest me as an accomplice, Emma, I know it. I’m next.”
“No, they’re not. You didn’t know Shepherd was killing those women.”
“They’ll find something to pin me with, I know it. The whole country knows I was his mistress while he was murdering all those women—God I can’t believe I was so, so stupid.” I sink onto the couch, drop my head into my hands, and begin sobbing. “Everyone hates me. They’re going to take Connor from me and I’m going to have this devil baby in prison, I know it.”
“Stop, Amber. Stop.”
“I don’t understand where she is,” I bellow. “Where is she? Where is Rowan?”
“I don’t know. No one knows. They released her secretly to avoid the media. No one knows. Amber.” Emma glances out the window. “She’s not going to come for you. You’ve got to let that go.”
“I was fucking her husband while she was spilling her guts to me on my couch. I was her therapist, Emma, and also the person who went to the cops and told them she killed those women. And now I am pregnant with her soon-to-be ex-husband’s baby. You really think she doesn’t want revenge?”
“She’s not going to hurt you.” Emma grabs my chin and turns my face to hers. “You have to relax.”
I shake my head. I can’t even respond. I am spinning. I feel like I am about to internally combust. My entire world has been flipped upside down.
Unable to sit any longer, I walk to the window and peek through the curtains. Thankfully, the media van that had been parked outside all day is gone.
“Come in the kitchen,” Emma stands, “let’s make you some tea.
It’s four hours later, an unseasonably cool night.
Emma is gone, Connor is asleep, and I am staring out the window.
A leaf falls from a tree, slowly flittering back and forth on the wind.
